Sin City Sequel: Worthy It or A Waste?

Still haven’t seen Sin City: A Dame to Kill For? Read on what some critics have to say.

Jessica Alba reprises one of her most popular roles, sexy stripper Nancy Callahan, and springs back into action in the anticipated Sin City sequel, Sin City: A Dame to Kill For.

Joining her in the new R-rated crime thriller, which hits theaters this Friday, are fellow returning stars Mickey Rourke, Powers Boothe and Bruce Willis, who makes a brief appearance.

Franchise newcomers include Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Josh Brolin, Lady Gaga, who worked with co-director Robert Rodriquez on Machete Kills, Law & Order: SVU alum Christopher Meloni and Casino Royale Bond girl and 300: Rise of an Empire vixen Eva Green, who plays the dame and has nude scenes.

The original 2005 movie, based on Frank Miller’s popular comic books, made more than $158 million worldwide and was well-received by most top critics. Check out what five of them have said about Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, which is also available in 3D.

1. Rolling Stone‘s Peter Travers gives the film two out of four stars and writes, “The follow-up to 2005’s eye-popping Sin City is neither the dazzler I hoped for nor the disaster I feared. But ‘meh’ is hardly the reaction you expect from a movie in which Eva Green and Jessica Alba shake their ta-tas and Mickey Rourke and Josh Brolin send souls screaming into hell. And this time they do it in 3D.”

2. Forbes‘ Scott Mendelson called Sin City: A Dame to Kill For a “not-so-guilty pleasure,” praised the 3D presentation as “superb” and raved about Green’s performance, saying she “powers the main story and provides a solid counter-balance to the original film in which most of the women were victims.”

“When you have two of the most gorgeous women in cinema today (Green and Alba) playing neither love interests or hostages, plus Gordon-Levitt looking dapper as all heck, I can forgive deficiencies elsewhere and enjoy the eye candy with minimal guilt,” he adds.

 

3. The New York Post‘s Kyle Smith said the movie constituted “100 solid minutes of wearying pastiche,” adding, “I found myself checking my watch a lot.”

“Viscerally portrayed as they are, the characters aren’t allowed to step away from being stock types,” he wrote. “That means the film delivers only a shrug and not a shock when someone, say, catches a bullet with his forehead.”

4. The Chicago Tribune‘s Michael Phillips gives Sin City: A Dame to Kill For two stars and doesn’t hold back with his blunt description of some of its most notable assets.

“The real stars of the movie are Eva Green’s breasts, portraying the breasts of the most vile, untrustworthy dame (the movie doesn’t say ‘dame’ though) in this dirty town,” he writes. “The femmes in ‘Sin City 2’ fall into two overlapping camps: fatale or near-fatale and nude or nearly.”

He also says that “There’s nobody in the sequel who brings the sly wit Carla Gugino did in the first.”

5. Variety‘s Justin Chang says in his review that Rodriquez’ and co-director Miller’s “monotone, monochrome universe feels flatter than ever” in Sin City: A Dame to Kill For. While he does praise the performances of Rourke, Brolin, Boothe, Lady Gaga and Green, he adds that “rare indeed is the movie that features this many bared breasts, pummeled crotches and severed noggins and still leaves you checking your watch every 10 minutes.”

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